Geology live at the largest glacier in the Alps – The Flow of Nature

“The glaciers in the Alps are beyond saving,” Swiss researchers reported last summer. It is inconceivable that even a giant like the Aletsch Glacier, a UNESCO World Heritage site and, at 23 kilometres in length, the largestglacier in the Alps, could disappear by the end of the century. But the omens are already there to see: as the icy titan melts, the mountain slope above it is losing its support and subsiding into the valley. Fortunately, the affected area is uninhabited. It has been closed off and new paths have been created, allowing hikers to observe the power of nature at work from a safe distance. The cable-car companies in the Aletsch Arena have been prepared for these kinds of geological mass movements for some time now. Today, Moosfluh is home to the first cable-car station in the world that moves with the bedrock. Thanks to an exemplary monitoring system, the Aletsch Arena’s mountain railway is even the “safest means of transport in Switzerland”. What else would you expect from the Swiss?